popup windows disappear too quickly

Certain applets (like terminal, clock, weather, trash, menu, master-volume and media-control-applet) have a popup window when they clicked on that allows you to access their features. I have a problem, when there is a fullscreen window open, and I move the mouse to go into the popup window it loses focus, summarily closing.This does not happen when just the desktop is on screen. It also happens when the dock is set not to cover the fullscreen window. Its somewhat annoying when you have several windows open and have to minimize them all just to access features in the dock, when the dock is visible anyway. After all, the point of having the thing is for quick access.